16. Chapter 16 #4
It takes everything within me not to stuff my throwing stars down his gullet.
A fair punishment, considering how the queen usually does worse things to liars, like hanging them upside-down in the city square by their ballsacks.
Although I’m not entirely sure that Flint’s additional appendage would be big enough to support his swinging bodyweight in that specific inverted position, but I digress.
“They aren’t a threat!” I cry out.
“Grandmama, did you hear what the weapons’ master just said?
” Lily laments, running a hand along the gargoyle’s cheek and then sauntering across the mist-filled courtyard to whisk up her weapons.
“He seems to believe that the blonde woman over there tried to poison me this morning. What do you think?” She spins her stars in her hands and pauses, as if she’s waiting for a response from the gargoyle.
Then, she nods. “That’s what I thought too. You are right Grandmama, as always.”
“Flint is lying!” I scream, my heart plummeting in my chest like a bird with a broken wing, spiraling to the ground before splatting. “He got us high in order to convince us to do terrible things to innocent people! This is some kind of game, Lily. Wake up, please!”
Flint’s lips curve upward, but he doesn’t vocalize his disagreement.
“Alright then,” Lily sighs, her gaze tipping down at Sunshine. “Since I respect the opinions of my elders,” she pauses to flash me a toothy smile, “I will give you one last chance to claim your innocence. Tell me, did you try to poison me this morning or not?”
Wait. Did she just call me her elder?
Sunshine doesn’t answer. Instead, her gaze remains fixated on the ground, as if that particular speck of dirt is suddenly far more interesting than this conversation right now.
Goddamnit, Sunshine. Say something.
“They’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Flint says, looking smug.
“That’s why she can’t respond. Just know that if she is freed, she will report back to the dragon king, and he will send more assassins in response.
Your life depends on her death. Do it. Do it now.
Cut her throat. The queen will be very satisfied. ”
Sunshine is an assassin for the dragon king?
No.
This can’t be right.
Lily closes her eyes, grips the throwing stars tighter, and then exhales as if she’s preparing to strike.
But something stops her mid-swing. It’s the shrill sound of a whistle penetrating the clearing, which escapes from my lips as easily as water flowing from a fountain.
The first official whistle I’ve ever breathed.
And it came so easily. Like a forgotten memory.
My whistle is followed by the movement of a dozen shadows spilling into the courtyard.
It’s accompanied by the scent of damp forest and sour blood.
Suddenly, a pack of ravenous wolves begin circling the perimeter of the wall, their snarls aching to cleave flesh apart, their fangs frothing for hot blood.
Void releases a bone-splitting howl in our general vicinity which leads to Lily shrieking and dropping her weapons in a pile of dirt.
Where did he come from?
“Run!” Lily shouts.
In a flurry of motion, she dives behind a climbing wall.
Maxine scales the statue at the courtyard’s center and positions her thighs around the God of War’s neck, as if she’s preparing to watch the carnage unfold like a paid spectator.
Bella grabs my hand and tugs me up a narrow staircase on the courtyard’s back side, which spills into a low-hanging mezzanine.
The altitude up here makes me feel wobbly, so I grab onto the railing for support, only to realize that the wolves are moving like a silent shadow in the courtyard below.
Fyra latches onto the first guard’s neck with ease.
He drops like a paperweight beneath her elongated teeth.
Blood spews and sputters, forming a blotchy puddle of dark goo that coagulates over heaps of weeds.
The second guard slips in that puddle of goo as Void strikes him next, his big, beautiful jaws clamping onto his chest plate and shredding him to bits and pieces.
Metal becomes as flimsy as liquid beneath Void’s maws as he exposes the guard for what he truly is: a monster.
A foul-smelling monster, nonetheless, whose mottled skin looks like it was patched together with pale gray disfiguration, and… ah… I guess he did have organs.
The guard drops dead.
“Don’t let them escape!” Flint shouts from somewhere far away, his voice subdued by the low-lurking growls of Fyra, who bears her fangs at him in warning.
Good girl.
I lean over the railing further, searching desperately for the maids. But just as I blink, the courtyard warps beneath me, smearing like oil on water. I can hear someone call out my name, but the voice is garbled and muted, as if I'm trapped underwater.
My grip slips just enough to tip me forward, dropping me into a place where the ground no longer exists.
The mist becomes the sky beneath my feet.
There’s no scream that erupts from my throat.
Probably because I have no time for one.
I’m encapsulated by a lurching sensation of weightlessness and the sudden impossible understanding that I am falling to my death.
Falling…
Falling…
And there is no one left to catch me but the gods.
That is, if they’re even listening.